IT WAS WAR, SAYS FATHER OF ABUSE

Found guilty of torturing boy in basement

OTTAWA • Nobody on the normally quiet suburban street had seen the 11-year-old boy for six months. He was no longer in school nor playing street hockey. Instead, his days and nights were spent chained up in a darkened basement, where his father tortured and starved him.

His father, a former RCMP counter-terrorism officer, also videotaped his naked son as he inflicted disturbing, religious-themed interrogations, demanding the shackled and emaciated boy repent, screaming that he “will weep blood” for his socalled sins. At one point, the ex-Mountie enlisted a priest to perform an exorcism.

In one of the horrifying videos that reduced defence lawyers and police to tears at trial, the tiny, frightened and starving boy begged: “I want my family back.”

The boy spent the last month of his captivity trying to escape the horrors of the basement, where he was chained to a post as he slept and forced to use a slop bucket for a toilet while the rest of his family went about their daily routine upstairs.

That he managed to loosen his chains and escape led to the child-abuse case against his father and stepmother, both found guilty in court on Monday. They have been jailed and await sentencing.

“I was terrified, hungry and thirsty. I couldn’t take it anymore. My entertainment was (staring at) a wall and I was just getting hurt and burned. I was scared to death,” the boy testified at trial.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger heaped praise on the terrorized boy, who had to relive the horror as he testified over three days at trial.

“That a parent could do the things that were done (to the boy) was gut-wrenching. That being said, however, the fact that this half-starved, burned and battered 11-yearold could somehow summon the strength to escape his cruel captivity and later seemingly rise above it, is a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit,” the judge said.

The judge-only trial against the ex-Mountie and his wife was anchored in their own statements — including the disgraced officer’s own cellphone-video footage of the abuse. In his police interview in 2013, he admitted to the crimes against the child — justified as discipline.

The father took the stand in his own defence at trial, portrayed himself as the victim and tried to explain that he thought his boy was possessed. At his wit’s end, he said, he started confining his son and rationing his meals.

The boy’s stepmother did not testify, but court heard that she told police that she was guilty of not protecting the boy and expressed remorse early on. The Crown, led by Marie Dufort and Michael Boyce, firmly established that she knew the boy was being confined and assaulted in the basement, the judge ruled. In fact, court heard that the stepmother — a senior bureaucrat — was at home on maternity leave while the torture unfolded in the basement.

She also told police she knew the boy was being confined and tortured by her husband.

The afternoon he escaped — Feb. 12, 2013 — his neighbours saw the boy wandering in the snow in search of water. One neighbour, who likened the boy to a ghost, gave him water after he spotted the boy trying to drink from the garden tap in a backyard. The boy went to another neighbour and asked for water and offered pocket change if he could stay the night. The boy was sent back home, but along the way, collapsed in a snowbank. The boy only weighed 22.7 kilograms. The neighbour called 911.

When police came, the boy came close to being returned to his Mountie father, who spun a tale of a wild, out-of-control son. The story prompted a responding officer to put her hand on the father’s shoulder as a form of comfort. But soon after, under the bright lights of an ambulance interior, it was clear the boy was the subject of severe abuse. The Ottawa police officer said it seemed as if she was looking at someone who had survived a concentration camp.

On Monday, more than three years later, the father, 45, was convicted of assault, sexual assault, forcible confinement and failing to provide the necessaries of life. The stepmother, 37, was found guilty of assault with a weapon (wooden spoon) and failing to provide the necessaries of life. All names are protected by a publication ban.

Since it was never in question that the boy had been abused, the father mounted a post-traumatic stress disorder defence during the trial.

The ex-Mountie said his son was the devil. “Me and my son were at war .... I had an enemy in front of me.”

He claimed he feared his boy and that he didn’t know his actions were wrong. He said he didn’t have the mental capacity to form the intent needed for a crime, but the judge didn’t buy it and noted the duration and severity of the torture.

The ex-Mountie was also convicted on a firearms charge for pointing a gun at his son’s head. “I was scared he was going to kill me,” the boy told a hushed courtroom last year.

The Ottawa couple will be sentenced next month. The judge noted that the wife’s role in the abuse was less serious than the father’s, and said the ex-Mountie is looking at serious penitentiary time.

ME AND MY SON WERE AT WAR. I HAD AN ENEMY IN FRONT OF ME.